


The Spy Who Turned Me

by rainbowninja167



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A 2013 throwback, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents, aka everyone is friends and nothing hurts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23397037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowninja167/pseuds/rainbowninja167
Summary: Stiles considered himself lucky when he and his childhood best friends - Scott and Lydia - all started working for the same defense contractor, Argent Enterprises. So, naturally, the company justhadto be secretly evil, and the three of them justhadto be recruited as informants for the CIA, and the agent running the operation justhadto be the hottest, angriest, mostfrustratingspy in existence.Not to mention, nobody in the CIA seems to have lasers in their watches, or grenade-pens, or anything cool like that. The dream truly is dead.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 18
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *taps microphone* Is this fandom on? Hello! It's been a while since my days in the Teen Wolf fandom, but hopefully some people might still enjoy an old fic of mine. I found 10k words of this just sitting, fully written and edited, on my laptop, and figured - what better time than an extended quarantine to pull it out, dust it off, and finally finish it!
> 
> This first chapter (and most of the next one) were written in 2013, so get ready for some good, old-fashioned, Hale Pack vs Argent Family shenanigans!

His dad always said that Stiles’ curiosity would get him into trouble one day. On several occasions, his dad had even witnessed this prediction coming true. But Stiles thought that even his dad – who’d stopped underestimating Stiles’ capacity for trouble when Stiles was five year old – would be impressed with the level of trouble he’s gotten himself into now.

At least, that’s what he tells the unfairly gorgeous and broody CIA agent who currently has a firm grip on his arm. Stiles wonders aloud if they’re going to a secret interrogation room where nobody will hear him scream. The agent – Derek Hale – seems distinctly unimpressed with Stiles’ attempts to charm him through light-hearted banter. Hale is silent as he ushers Stiles through a door and shuts it behind him with an ominous click. Stiles looks around at the bare room with interest.

“Is this where you torture people? Oh my God, are you gonna torture _me_? Because it’s not my fault the CIA encryption software is outdated--”

“I might,” Agent Hale scowls at him. “If you don’t tell me, in the next ten seconds, how you knew about Dark Canyon.”

“I can’t,” Stiles says, eyes wide, and Hale looks like he’s barely restraining himself from shoving Stiles’ head into the table. “No, I mean, it’s a long story, I can’t tell it in just ten seconds. I mean, I’m pretty sure ten seconds have already gone by, and--”

“Then talk fast,” Hale interrupts through gritted teeth. Stiles quails a little bit under the menacing tilt of Hale’s eyebrows.

“OK, well, um…”

***

It all started because Stiles was late to work, as usual. He’d burst through the doors of Argent Enterprises, Beacon Hills’ biggest (and only) government contractor, desperately downing a travel mug of coffee because he didn’t have time to drink it at breakfast. Or actually eat breakfast. Usually, it was Scott who forced him out the door in the morning – one of his most useful and most annoying roommate qualities – but Scott had to come in early that day.

And that was why Stiles was skidding around a corner wildly while simultaneously taking a swig from his mug and checking his phone for angry texts from his boss. And that was probably why he didn’t see the short, older man coming the opposite way – at least until Stiles’ coffee was all over the guy’s shirt, and the guy’s papers were all over the floor.

“Oh my God,” Stiles said, ducking belatedly out of the way and clutching his mug to his chest. “I mean – sorry. I didn’t – crap, let me help you with those.”

The guy looked familiar, and Stiles felt like he _should_ know his name. It might’ve been Clancy? He looked like a Clancy. He also looked a little helpless in the face of Stiles’ apologetic enthusiasm, and he let Stiles collect most of his papers. Stiles glanced down at them before he handed them back, his eyes alighting on a familiar model number printed on the standard Argent Enterprises form.

“Are these orders for the new anti-aircraft missiles? Man, Lydia’s gonna flip out if Mr. Argent’s already put it up for sale. It’s just out of prototype.”

“Thanks,” Clancy said, holding his hand out for the papers. But Stiles held onto it, talking absently to Clancy as he scanned the form.

“They’re getting sent to a military instillation called “Dark Canyon,” huh? That’s not ominous, or anything. Y’know, the US always says we’re going on peacekeeping missions to places, and then we come up with names, like, ‘the Murderdome’ for our military installations, and then we wonder—“

“ _Thank you_ ,” Clancy said again, pointedly, his hand still held out for the stack of papers.

“I’m just _saying_ , what’s wrong with calling it ‘Camp Friendship Is Magic’ or something— Oh. Yeah. Sorry again about…” Stiles’ gesture encompassed the coffee stains on Clancy’s white shirt, as well as the dilapidated, disorganized, somewhat sodden lump his papers had become. “See ya ‘round, Clancy.” He waved behind him as he continued down the hallway.

“…My name’s Don,” Clancy said, looking bemusedly after Stiles’ retreating back.

***

“I don’t care what you think his name was,” Hale says, looming impatiently at Stiles. Stiles jerks away from him nervously, but tries to pass it off like he was just scratching an itch on his shoulder. From Hale’s slow, predatory grin, Stiles is pretty sure the subterfuge fails.

Hale leans in close to Stiles’ face, his gray-green eyes darkening, and Stiles can feel his pulse skitter. He swallows and looks down at the floor.

“Dark Canyon,” Hale reminds him, voice low and dangerous. Stiles hasn’t been this simultaneously turned on and terrified since junior year of high school, when Lydia Martin had cornered him in the boys’ bathroom and informed him that he was going to the Fall Formal with her, and if his tie didn’t match her dress, she would _destroy him_. He swallows again.

The thought of Lydia reminds him of the rest of the story, and he tries to pick it up while ignoring the scent of Hale’s aftershave.

***

Stiles told Lydia and Scott about the paperwork he’d seen, as the three of them sat at their usual lunch table in the cafeteria, mostly because it was cool to think about Lydia’s creations being shipped all over the world.

“I mean, I was _there_ , at the bar, for the original cocktail napkin calculations, you know?” Stiles was telling them nostalgically as he bit into his turkey sandwich.

“That dude slipped it to you with his number on it, all smooth, and you just started writing,” Scott reminded her cheerfully. It was almost impossible not to go anywhere with Lydia without _someone_ hitting on her, and after going through the three stages of embarrassment, awkwardness, and annoyance, Scott and Stiles had finally settled on acceptance, mixed with a heavy dose of glee at the ease with which Lydia dispatched pushy men.

Stiles understood the impulse to try with Lydia. If Stiles hadn’t been in love with her for enough of his childhood to have fallen irrevocably _out of love_ with her as an adult…yeah, he’d totally be trying, too.

“His phone number was arranged in a stimulating sequence,” Lydia was saying, but her face was furrowed and distracted.

“If only the guy had been as ‘stimulating,’” Stiles joked, making a lewd gesture with his sandwich. Scott snorted into his soup, but Lydia just frowned.

“You said Dark Canyon?” she asked Stiles. It took him a couple of seconds to remember what they’d just been talking about.

“Oh, um, yeah. Cool, huh?”

Lydia tossed her hair, like she always did when she was about to be smarter than someone else. “Stiles, AE only has contracts with the _American_ military. And there aren’t any US military bases called Dark Canyon. Anywhere in the world.”

Scott gaped at her. “How do you just _know_ that?” he asked, awed.

Lydia’s pleased, half-smile at the implied compliment belied her acidic response: “I design weapons for the military for a living. It’s only reasonable to keep up with deployments and defense budgets, don’t you think?”

“I’m pretty sure it said Dark Canyon, though,” Stiles interrupted, puzzled. “I remember, because then I started thinking about what a depressing name it was, and—”

“Stiles, nobody at the DOD is gonna listen to your Camp Friendship Is Magic idea, you really need to—“ Scott began to interrupt.

“ _Wait_. Do you think it’s a _secret_ military base? Like, CIA? Are we selling stuff to the CIA?”

“Jesus, shut up,” Lydia hissed, looking around. “I’m sure we are. I mean, who do you think is using that specialized antibiotic that Scott created last year?”

“Edith,” Scott remembered fondly. “She had a beautiful genetic structure.”

“It will never stop being weird that you name your microbes,” Stiles told him, and shuddered into his sandwich.

Stiles had always thought Scott would become a vet, but halfway through an undergrad degree in Biology, Scott had landed a summer internship at the CDC, and he hadn’t looked back.

Instead, Scott satisfies his cravings for cute furriness by housing a veritable menagerie in the apartment he and Stiles share. Stiles is pretty sure, based on a heated argument with their landlord, that earlier this month Scott had tried to stash a goat named Delores in the maintenance shed.

Stiles had always been more into computers than creatures. He’s barely willing to tolerate the dog, two cats, four goldfish, a revolving door of various small rodents, and the homicidal iguana that currently live with him. Even though they very rarely tolerate each other.

***

“You have a dog named Indiana Jones? That’s – um, I mean, and then what happened?” Agent Lahey asks, turning to Scott, who’s fidgeting nervously in his seat, a few interrogation rooms away from Stiles.

“He woke me up the next morning. It was, like, five in the morning!” Scott spares a moment to be indignant about that, all over again.

“And that’s when he told you about Dark Canyon? But how did _he_ know?”

There’s a beat. Scott shuffles in his seat, eyes sliding down to study the table in front of him.

“Um…Google?” he tries, grinning up at Lahey.

***

“—ott, Scott, Scott,” Stiles was chanting as Scott dragged himself into consciousness, like he’d been saying it for a while. Scott went slightly cross-eyed trying to focus on Stiles’ pale face directly above his. Stiles was bouncing slightly in place, his hands prodding helplessly at Scott like he didn’t know what else to do with them.

“Do you have to pee or something?” Scott asked, wincing as he looked at the clock.

“No!” Stiles paused. “Well, actually yeah…I’ve had a _lot_ of coffee…but that’s not the point,” he rushed to add.

“It’s really early,” Scott groaned. He rolled over, a futile attempt to try to escape the sharp jabs of Stiles’ fingers. “You can stop doing that, I’m already awake.”

Stiles looked down at his hands like he wa surprised to see them moving, and stuffed them in the front pocket of the bedraggled red “lucky hoodie” that he always wore for important coding projects.

“I think we’re working for SPECTRE,” Stiles blurted out. Scott groaned again.

“Dude, you _really_ need to stop falling asleep to Bond marathons.”

“No, seriously! I couldn’t sleep, and I was thinking about what Lydia had said at lunch, about Dark Canyon not being a thing, and about how maybe we’re secret suppliers to the CIA, and what if there’s a whole division of Argent Enterprises that makes, like, pens that blow poison darts, or maybe the Batmobile, and if I could get transferred there…”

“Stiles. It’s _really early_ ,” Scott repeated with a wince.

“Sorry. So, um, I got curious. And I may have, possibly… brokenintoasecureCIAserver?” He rushed through the last part, wincing exaggeratedly.

“ _What?_ ” Scott shot up in bed and nearly broke Stiles’ nose with his forehead in the process.

“Accidentally,” Stiles amended.

“How do you accidentally break into a CIA server? Are you crazy?” Scott yelped at him.

“Well, I didn’t mean to start thinking about it, and then once I had, I couldn’t stop!”

“That is _so_ not what ‘accident _’_ means—“

“The _Batmobile_ , Scott!”

“Yeah, and I’m sure that’ll be a great defense when you get arrested for treason! ‘Oh, sorry your Honor, DC Comics made me do it!’”

“You know what? That’s not the point! The point is, I looked up Dark Canyon. And the CIA had a big file on them– ” Stiles stared at Scott expectantly, but all Scott could do was stare back blankly. His brain still felt like cotton, and he knew if he waited long enough, Stiles would just give up and tell him. Stiles always did.

“Don’t you get it? The people AE is selling to? Scott, Dark Canyon isn’t CIA. It’s the CIA’s _code name_ for a pro-government training ground in Syria that’s funded by the Russians.”

“So what?” Scott asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“So what?” Stiles hissed back sarcastically. “So, I think Argent Enterprises is actually an evil international arms dealer, that’s what!”

Scott blinked at him, and then went cold. “So all our work…Lydia’s rockets? My microorganisms?”

“Yup,” Stiles popped the “p,” like he was getting a sick satisfaction out of sharing the news. “We’re totally super-villains now.”

“What do we do?” Scott looked up at Stiles, eyes wide.

“I dunno, get capes and practice the laugh?” Stiles answered sarcastically.

“Stiles, I’m serious!”

“Dude, I have no idea! Why the hell do you think I woke _you_ up?” Stiles cried, arms flailing wildly enough that he almost tipped himself off the bed.

“OK, OK, we just need to calm down.” Scott could feel himself wheezing a little bit with panic, and he felt around his bedside table preemptively for his inhaler. “It’s gonna be fine, we’ll just…”

“…Call Lydia,” Stiles finished for him, eyes lighting up as the solution hit him.

“Right. Right.” Scott’s breathing evened out. “Good plan. Let’s call Lydia.”

***

“You broke into a secure CIA server. One of the best-protected networks in the world,” Agent Hale says flatly. Stiles can’t tell if it’s a question or not, so he just settles for smiling sheepishly and saying in a consoling tone, “Well, it did take me almost 6 hours.”

Hale actually _snarls_ at him then, and Stiles doesn’t even _pretend_ not to flinch.

“Boyd,” Derek snaps.

“Huh?” Stiles asks, before he realizes that Derek isn’t talking to him, but to someone in his earpiece.

“Verify this with Washington. Ask them how the _hell_ it’s possible this twitchy, mouthy _kid_ cracked their security.”

“I can tell you how,” Stiles informs Hale cheerfully. “But my consulting fee is very high. And I’m not a kid,” he adds. Hale growls something incomprehensible back, but Stiles is pretty sure it’s rude.

***

Lydia was accustomed enough to Scott and Stiles that when they called her early in the morning, she answered by stating flatly: “Someone better be dead.”

Stiles indignantly yelped, “Lydia! What if someone _was_ dead, and I was calling to tell you that Scott had gotten his head stuck in a banister and tragically asphyxiated? How would you feel _then_?”

“That this conversation wasn’t a complete waste of my time,” she retorted tartly.

“Look, can you just…come over?” Scott said a little desperately into the phone, and Lydia was quiet for a moment, considering it.

“Fine. But there better be coffee when I get there.”

She let herself in to their apartment complex with the key she’d had made months ago, after they’d locked themselves out for the fourth time, and had tried to get in through a window, and Stiles had broken his wrist.

She took the coffee they handed her, and allowed them to babble on about Syria and Batmobiles and _secret death prisons, oh my god_ for as long as she could tolerate.

“Well,” she said finally, going slightly pale but otherwise not noticeably reacting to the news. “We obviously have to report them.”

That shut them both up. For a moment.

“Did you not _hear_ the thing I was saying, about the _death prisons?_ ” Stiles asked, waving his arms at her. She rolled her eyes.

“It’s not like the Argents are being super subtle. I mean, _we_ figured it out, didn’t we? So either the Argents think Dark Canyon is really CIA, in which case we’ll be preventing their horrible mistake. Or they know it _isn’t_ , in which case they’re probably going to get caught. And I’d rather not go to prison. Or design technology that’s used by terrorists,” she added, like it was an afterthought.

“Who would we even tell?” Stiles challenged her.

“Your dad?” Scott offered.

“No way! What’s a small-town sheriff gonna do against a secret illegal arms dealer, except probably die horribly?”

“He’s got a point,” Scott told Lydia. “And it’s not like we know anyone else who would believe us. I mean, what are we gonna do, call up the CIA and say, ‘hey, we found some bad guys, send help?’”

“Hm?” Lydia murmured, fiddling with her phone rather than attending to what Scott and Stiles were saying. “Actually, yes.”

She hit a button on her phone, and a tinny, pre-recorded voice emanated from its speaker.

_Thank you for calling the Central Intelligence Agency. If you have information which you believe might be of interest to the CIA in pursuit of its foreign intelligence mission, please leave a message with your name and contact information after the tone._

Stiles’ mouth opened and closed in shock, and Scott had started making little wheezing noises, so Lydia huffed and enunciated clearly into the phone: “Lydia Martin. I work for Argent Enterprises. I have information on a weapons deal with Dark Canyon.” And then hung up.

“Oh my god, this is _so cool_ ,” Stiles told her, practically wriggling with glee. Lydia gave him a look that, on anyone else, would be fond.

“How do you know they’ll call back?” Scott asked.

“Stiles had to break through some serious layers of security to get to Dark Canyon, right? Pretty sure that phrase’ll raise an alarm.”

Sure enough, fewer than ten minutes later, Lydia’s phone rang. After considering it for half-a-second, she picked it up and put it on speaker again.

“How do you know about Dark Canyon?” barked a gruff, pissed-off-sounding voice, without preamble.

“Hello to you too, Agent 007,” Stiles said in his best (read: terrible) British accent. Scott giggled. There was an uncertain pause on the other end of the phone.

“Who is this?” the voice finally said, sounding, if possible, even _more_ pissed off. “If this is someone wasting my time--”

“We’re not,” Lydia jumped in. “I’m the one who called. My two colleagues and I, we all work at AE, and we figured out they’re not really a government contractor. Or maybe they are, but we know they’re about to ship a set of anti-aircraft missiles to Russian forces in Syria, and we know they’re smaller and more powerful than what the US military currently has. And…um…I designed them.” Her voice wobbled a little bit at the end, and Stiles shot her a concerned look. She shot him a scathing one back. There was another pause on the phone.

“Don’t go in to work today, any of you. Call in sick. We’re sending a car,” the voice ordered, before the line went dead with a click.

“He’s not the most polite dude in the world, is he?” Stiles asked, staring thoughtfully at Lydia’s phone. “Clearly customer service is not the CIA’s strong point.”

“How do they know where to send the car?” Scott asked, staring uneasily at the phone in Lydia’s hand.

“Shut up,” Lydia ordered, fiddling with it once again. “I have to fake food poisoning to my boss, and he always catches lies.”

“Apparently not _that_ well,” Scott mumbled.

***

“That’s a good excuse, food poisoning,” Agent Reyes says approvingly to Lydia, where they’re both seated casually in yet another interrogation room, Lydia sipping the coffee that Agent Reyes had brought her. “Sudden, violent, and no lasting symptoms.”

“Exactly,” Lydia nods, smirking like a pleased cat. There’s a brief pause while Agent Reyes pays attention to something happening on her earpiece, and then she chokes with shocked laughter.

“Your friend really broke into the CIA’s servers?”

“Took him six hours,” Lydia says proudly.

“That’s terrifying. I need to meet this guy,” Agent Reyes says, a devious grin spreading over her face.

Lydia tosses her hair nonchalantly. “No, you know what’s _really_ terrifying? _I’m_ the smart one of the group.”

Reyes’ grin, if possible, spreads even wider.

“I already love this assignment,” she says.

“Wait, what assignment?”

***

“That’s subtle,” Stiles said about the black sedan that pulled up to his and Scott’s apartment building twenty minutes later. He tried to engage the driver in conversation on the way to _wherever_ they were going, but the driver remained calmly impervious to Stiles’ attempts to guess which part of the car held a secret weapons cache, and he refused to confirm or deny the presence of ejector seats.

The car pulled up to a nondescript-looking office building in the next town over from Beacon Hills.

“Agent Hale will meet you in the lobby,” said the drive. The moment the three of them had gotten out of the car, it pulled away again.

“Who?” Stiles asked, and then he saw him. The most insanely hot person Stiles had ever seen in real life. Like, Greek god levels of _holycrap_ , all muscles and prowling movements. What the hell was _this guy_ doing in a shitty office building in the middle of nowhere?

“ _Well_ ,” Lydia said, and it sounded more like a purr.

“Huh?” Scott asked, looking around wildly to figure out what they were staring at.

Stiles’ brain fizzled a little bit when confronted with this guy’s crazily perfect cheekbones and 9am five-o’clock shadow. He tried valiantly not to look down at the way the guy’s suit pants stretched across his hips as he walked towards them.

…Walked…towards them?

“Agent Hale,” he bit out when he reached them, and Stiles took a moment from his complete brain meltdown to register that it was the same grumpy voice from the phone. “Come with me.”

“…if you want to live,” Scott whispered, and Stiles’ responding laugh was only slightly hysterical.

***

“…And then we got driven here, and met you, and there’s nothing more to tell!” Stiles finishes wildly, ears turning slightly red as he looks anywhere but at Agent Hale. “So, are we free to go or what? We told you what we know, you go arrest the evildoers in a stunning display of heroics, and, like, make the world safe for democracy, or whatever?” He perks up suddenly. “Hey, is there a reward for this kind of thing?”

“It’s not that simple,” Hale says, and from the look on his face, he’s reminding himself just as much as Stiles. “We’ve known about the Argents for years,” and his face goes carefully blank, like there’s something he’s not saying.

 _Knowing the CIA, there’s probably a lot he’s not saying_ , Stiles reflects.

“If we arrest them, their buyers will just look elsewhere,” Hale continues.

“Oh, like Whac-a-Mole,” Stiles says, nodding in understanding.

“What? No. What?”

“Hit one, another pops up,” Stiles explains with a shrug. “But you’re trying to pull the plug on the whole game.”

“Can we retire this metaphor—”

“So basically, this whole interrogation thing was pointless,” Stiles interrupts, frowning. “And what, we’re just supposed to go back to _work_ for them?”

Hale goes very still, like he doesn’t want to spook Stiles with what comes next.

“You could…help us,” he says carefully. “We’ve been looking for someone to be a mole in their organization for a long time, but my superiors have never wanted to take the risk. If we approach the wrong person, it tips off the Argents, and destroys years of work. But you’ve already come to us. And Washington just confirmed you weren’t lying. About the hacking, at least.”

Stiles entertains the idea for a moment. Being an awesome secret agent, wearing expensive suits, and drinking martinis at Monte Carlo. But…that’s the kind of stuff Agent Hale gets to do, with his dangerous eyes and perfect stubble. Hale was right - Stiles is just a computer kid. He’d probably get killed in the first scene. _Whack a mole, literally_ , Stiles thinks a little hysterically, and that’s what really decides him. Nobody whose brain makes such bad puns should be given a gun and unlimited government resources. It would end in tragedy, Stiles knows it would.

“I’d like to,” he says, fidgeting with a pen on the table and ducking his head apologetically. Hale takes a quick breath, almost like a gasp, but other than that, he doesn’t react. “But see, my dad…If anything happened to me…”

“This is very important to the Agency,” Hale tells him evenly, but his eyes don’t quite meet Stiles’.

“Oh, what, will you kill me if I don’t cooperate, or something?” Stiles rolls his eyes.

“I wouldn’t have to. I could just arrest you.”

“For _what?”_

“Cyberterrorism,” Hale reminds him, and there’s a sort of sadistic pleasure in the way he drawls out the syllables.

“Seriously? You guys wouldn’t even know unless I’d called you! And anyway, Lydia and Scott didn’t do anything. You couldn’t arrest them!”

“Oh, _them_ I’d kill,” Hale says, and Stiles can’t quite decide if he’s joking or not.

***

“You know, we don’t actually kill people who turn down job offers,” Derek’s boss says to him later, a hint of censure in his voice. But he doesn’t yell or order Derek to fix it. That’s what Derek likes about Deaton, he thinks. He might judge Derek heavily, but he does usually trust him. And Derek usually turns out to be right in the end.

 _Not always_ , says a voice in his head that he resolutely ignores.

They’re both standing in the observation room, watching Stilinski, Martin, and McCall get briefed by Boyd, Erica, and Isaac. The three assets huddle a little too close together, and Derek is reminded that they’re apparently close friends. And, despite Derek’s taunt from earlier, none of them had actually _looked_ like kids until now. Stilinski’s eyes in particular are wide and dark with fear, and Derek stomps down on a surge of guilt.

“This is the best shot we’ve had in a while,” Derek says instead.

“I’m aware,” Deaton tells him, with a knowing, half-pitying expression. “Just as I’m equally aware that this mission is personal for you.”

“So you‘re _also_ aware that I would never do anything to compromise its success,” Derek retorts.

“There are some things more important than short-term success,” Deaton says, with another troubled look at the three scientists behind the glass. Stilinski is saying something with elaborate hand gestures that makes McCall laugh, and the tension around Martin’s shoulders ease. “I’m worried that your emotional connection could prompt you to push too far, too quickly,” Deaton continues. “This is dangerous work. And they don’t really know what they’re getting into.”

“My entire family was assassinated the minute my parents started closing in on AE,” Derek counters savagely. “I’m well aware of the danger. But as you told me then, ‘Sometimes we have to make sacrifices, for the greater good.’”

Deaton gives him a sharp look. “I don’t believe those were my actual words.”

“Are you saying I’m making the wrong call, by turning these assets?” Derek challenges, suddenly tired of this conversation.

“Not necessarily. But they are _your_ responsibility now, Derek. I need to know you’ll take that seriously.”

“Sir, believe me, I take everything to do with the Argents _very_ seriously.”

Deaton frowns. Derek gets the impression that he’s just failed some silent test, but he also has no idea what kind of answer Deaton had been looking for instead. Derek had told the truth; it’ll have to be enough.

***

“We’re gonna take you home now,” Lahey is saying as Hale and Deaton slip back into the room. “You should just go about your normal routine like nothing has happened. Go to work. Go home. Act normally.”

Stiles snorts, and Lydia rolls her eyes. Isaac shrugs good-humoredly at them, as though he knows that those instructions are impossible to realistically follow.

“We’re going to establish cover identities in Beacon Hills, and once those are set up, we’ll interact with you gradually, so that won’t be suspicious whenever we need to meet,” Boyd adds.

“We’re also gonna keep an eye on you, make sure you’re safe. We don’t anticipate any sort of trouble right now, but the Argents are seriously dangerous, and it’s better to be cautious,” Lahey picks up the trail of the lecture again.

“Yeah, and you haven’t even been to one of their office Christmas parties,” Scott says, his face still a little pale. It’s not a good joke, but Stiles and Lydia giggle anyway. The agents wait until they’re done before continuing.

“We’ll be in touch every so often, to debrief you about information from AE, and possibly ask you to find out specific things, from time to time,” Reyes adds.

Hale cuts in then: “For ease, you’re each going to get one of us as your handler – that’s someone who’s primarily responsible for collecting that information and ensuring your safety. McCall, you’re with Lahey.”

“It’s Isaac, actually,” Agent Lahey says, squinting his eyes in a truly adorable smile. Scott beams back.

“…Martin with Reyes.”

“Erica,” she says, sticking her hand out. She and Lydia give each other equal assessing stares, before grinning at each other.

“Stilinski, you’re with Boyd. God help him,” Hale finishes in a mutter.

“It’s just Boyd,” Boyd says with a shrug. “My mom was high on a ton of painkillers when she named me, and it shows.”

“I get that,” Stiles tells him feelingly. Boyd gives him a bro nod, and Stiles decides that they’re going to be best friends.

“How ‘bout you?” he turns to Hale, who is glowering (beautifully) in the corner, like this show of asset-handler friendliness is physically painful to watch.

“You can call me ‘Agent Hale,’” he says flatly. “Or ‘Sir,’” he adds after a pause, and if Stiles didn’t know better, he would swear a smile had just tugged at the corners of Hale’s mouth. Erica huffs, half-mocking and half-fond.

“He’s Derek. His sister calls him Der-Bear, though, so you could--”

“Erica,” Derek warns, and Stiles is momentarily fascinated by the little angry dance his eyebrows do.

“So if these three are gonna be…handling us,” Stiles drawls over the word, waggling his eyebrows back at Derek and enjoying the way Derek just looks weary at the innuendo. “And, like, trying not to get us killed and all that? What’s your job?”

“Trying to _get_ you killed,” Derek says, and bares his teeth into a blinding grin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles, Scott, and Lydia settle into their new lives as International Nerds of Mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha I had SUCH high hopes about all the fic-writing I was going to get done while staying at home, and of course I have managed approximately none of it. So this chapter ended up taking longer than expected, partially because it kind of ballooned into 13k, and the next one will probably be the same way. But you have my word that I will absolutely finish this fic no matter what!
> 
> The following chapter was written while watching lots and lots of the show "Leverage," and has a similarly loose relationship with realism. In other words, no actual spies, computer experts, or thieves were consulted in the writing of this chapter. If you, dear reader, hold any of those professions, please forgive my flagrant inventions.

When they arrive home, a cadre of spies in tow, Indiana runs up to them immediately, barking joyously like they’d been gone for years.

“Dr. Jones!” Scott cries, fully buying into the dog’s narrative of abandonment. Scott only calls Indiana ‘Dr. Jones’ when he’s particularly happy to see him, because – as Scott had once solemnly explained – he doesn’t want Indiana to believe they only value him for his intelligence. Scott immediately bends down to rub behind his ears, and Indiana goes, if possible, even crazier.

Stiles glances back at the spies. Isaac’s gaze is bouncing between Derek and Indiana, like he really wants to pet the dog but isn’t sure if he’s allowed. Erica is smirking at Scott, and Boyd is looking around their apartment with assessing eyes.

Stiles tries to see the space the way the agents must, rather than with the comfortable skimming-over of someone who actually lives there. It’s not a bad place to live. It’s small, but he and Scott have been in each others’ spaces for so long now, since they were kids, that it doesn’t feel cramped. The front door opens onto the living room, which is almost entirely taken up by their most important possessions: an absurdly squashy sofa and a large TV. Video game cases, books, pet paraphernalia, and lots of ancient computer equipment that Stiles is “repairing” litter the tables and floors, but the mess could be – and has been – worse.

The kitchen is separated from the living room by a counter, on which rests a pile of newspapers and a fish tank. There is a pile of dirty dishes in the sink that Stiles can see from here, and an _Adventure Time_ poster on the wall. It is not, Stiles reflects, the sort of apartment that screams “mature, responsible, super-spy.”

As if to confirm Stiles’ fears, Scott starts rolling around on the floor with Indiana, and Derek starts rolling his eyes.

“You have a _dog?_ ” he asks, as though the fact physically pains him. And why is he glaring at _Stiles_ when he says that, it’s not even Stiles’ dog! _Scott_ is the one who picks up strays off the side of the road, and answers every single “Shit, I never learned how babies are made and now we have five million kittens” Facebook post, and cries at the ASPCA ads on Hulu.

But Stiles doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he grins brightly and answers, “Yup! Also cats.”

“Chewbacca and Mewtwo,” Scott says from the floor, where he’s pressing his face against Indiana’s nose.

“They’re probably hiding somewhere. They don’t approve of newcomers,” Stiles assures Derek.

“Stiles named them,” Scott adds blithely, but shoots Stiles a wink when Derek looks away. “That’s the rule. Stiles names all the animals bigger than a loaf of bread and I name all the animals smaller than.”

“…Smaller than?” Derek asks, looking apprehensively around the room until his eyes alight on the fish tank on the counter and the hamster cage on the floor and the large lizard tank against the wall.

“Yeah, what’s that one named again, Scott?” Stiles gestures to the hamster cage, in which lolls a guinea pig that seems to have gotten itself wedged in a Habitrail tube and then fallen asleep.

“Lester,” Scott hisses back, like he’s afraid the guinea pig will hear Stiles and get offended. “The fish are Algernon, Jeannine, Clementine, and Todd.”

“How about this one?” Isaac asks, gravitating toward their frilled dragon lizard.

“I wouldn’t--” Stiles starts, but the lizard takes one look at Isaac’s approaching form, unfurls its frill to about three times its previous size, and makes a violent hissing noise like a kettle boiling over. Isaac jumps back.

“Its name is Jackson,” Lydia says, with no small amount of satisfaction.

“After Lydia’s ex-boyfriend. We knew him in high school,” Scott explains.

“The resemblance is truly striking,” Stiles adds dryly. Jackson snaps at the air.

“Can we—” Derek makes a pained gesture, and Isaac, Erica, and Boyd jump guiltily into action, fanning into different parts of Scott and Stiles’ apartment and poking around.

“Hey!” Stiles attempts, but Derek just gives him a contemptuous look and motions for him to be quiet. It only takes Stiles a few more moments to realize that the devices in the agents’ hands mean that they’re scanning for listening devices.

“This is _so cool_ ,” he whispers to Scott, ignoring Derek’s impatient _shushing_ motions.

“It’s clean,” Erica tells Derek, emerging from Stiles’ room. She leers a little at Stiles as she passes, and Stiles has a brief moment of horror when he thinks about all the things Erica could have found while poking around in his bedroom.

“We didn’t think you were on the Argents’ radar--” Boyd explains to Scott, who is still gaping at them all a little helplessly “--or we wouldn’t have come here in the first place. But it’s good to confirm.”

“We should be able to talk freely in this space,” Isaac adds. “We also wanted to assess your environment, in case there’s any kind of…situation. In the future.” He looks a little apologetic when he says it, which is the most adorable non-threat Stiles has ever received.

“Also, there are a couple more things we need to go over, about your new roles,” Derek cuts in abruptly, like he wants this meeting over with as quickly as possible.

 _You and me both, buddy_ , Stiles tells him silently.

***

It’s familiar protocol to wait until new assets are back in a familiar, safe environment to brief them fully. It’s a tactical maneuver Derek has used hundreds of times. It makes them comfortable and less likely to panic once you start getting into the details of what they’ve signed up for. But there might be such a thing as _too_ comfortable, Derek realizes, and it looks remarkably similar to what is currently happening around him: McCall interrupting the meeting every few minutes to ask people if they want snacks, Erica and Lydia Martin interrupting the interruptions with sarcastic commentary, Stilinski practically _seducing_ Boyd in the corner with some crappy broken computers, and worst of all, an adorable fluffy dog drooling all over his pants.

“Can we pay attention to the briefing, _please_!” Derek barks, and everyone looks contrite except for Stilinski, who is already opening his mouth to protest.

“I don’t care,” Derek tells him preemptively.

“But Stiles has a Commodore 64,” Boyd interjects, a little mutinously.

“I don’t know what that is, and also, I _really_ don’t care,” Derek repeats. “We’re going to talk about Argent Enterprises now. So sit down and shut up, all of you.”

“But how are we supposed to _talk_ about AE if we—“ Stilinski mumbles, absently disentangling a snarl of wires he’s found on the floor with those deft, slightly knobbly hands of his. Derek suddenly finds himself caught on the weirdly hypnotic sight of long fingers twisting and teasing at strands of intertwined color.

 _Enough_ , he thinks savagely, and before he can think better of it, he’s grabbed Stilinski by both shoulders and is hauling him bodily toward the sofa.

Stilinski yelps but goes easily enough, only tripping over his own feet twice before practically falling backwards onto the sofa. His shoulders are warm and firm under Derek’s hands, and broader than Derek would have expected under his oversized, rumpled shirt. Derek’s hands flex once before he forces them into his own pockets, out of sight and memory alike.

Derek glowers around the room until Erica and Martin shut their mouths with identical snaps, McCall smuggles Isaac another handful of Oreos but then puts them away, and even the stupid dog backs off. He takes a deep breath, and begins again.

“Stilinski, as a programmer in Data Security, you’re very well-placed to pass valuable information,” Derek tells Stiles, trying not to let the excitement show in his face or voice, and possibly spook the new assets. It’s like a miracle, that someone with Stiles’ background would just fall into their laps like this, after years of struggling for the slightest way in. Gerard Argent has always been ten moves ahead of them, and if Stiles Stilinski hadn’t been so damn annoying, Derek would have suspected a trick.

“If we can find some sort of backdoor into AE’s system—” Derek continues. Stiles, who has been absent-mindedly fiddling with his phone now that he doesn’t have computer junk to play with, jerks up his head at that.

“Yeah, no. I can’t do that,” he tells Derek, scrunching up his whole face into an elaborate wince of apology.

“I understand that this might seem very _scary_ ,” Derek begins between gritted teeth, trying to sound calming and trustworthy, rather than deeply irritated, “and maybe even impossible. But we’re here to look out for you. And we have faith in your abilities.”

Lydia Martin snorts behind her hand at that. Stiles glances at her, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, like they’re sharing a private joke.

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but it doesn’t just _seem_ impossible. It _is_ impossible. There are no backdoors into the AE security system, and no way to steal information without being immediately identified,” Stiles tells Derek flatly, but his smile is widening. Derek rolls his eyes.

“Says the guy who hacked into the CIA in six hours,” Derek tells him, a little smug at using Stiles’ own annoying feat against him. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. There are always weaknesses.”

“Not in AE.” Stiles says, his half-smile widening into something slightly evil. He pauses a beat for effect. “The designer was very thorough.”

“Oh my God, don’t tell me,” Derek moans, dropping his head into his hands. He reconsiders the possibility that this is all a sadistic scheme orchestrated by the Argents.

“What? It’s not my fault they turned out to be evil!”

Scowling, Derek takes in the awkward, snub-nosed, long-limbed kid in front of him, shirt half-untucked and collar crooked, worrying at his lip and blinking back at Derek with wide, innocent Bambi eyes.

Derek has never loathed anyone more.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles says, and he does seem genuinely apologetic. “And look, I can try to _build_ a way in, but all changes to existing code have to be approved, and if I’m gonna do it without getting caught, I’ll need to like...bide my time, you know?”

“Fine,” Derek says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Can you at least remember the face of the guy you bumped into in the hallway? If we can identify him, it might give us insight into the network of people who are aware of AE’s illicit activities.”

“Sure, yeah,” Stiles says quickly, like he’s eager to be helpful for once, instead of just an enormous pain in the ass.

“Go into the other room with Isaac, then. He’ll put together a sketch.”

“You can draw? That’s awesome, dude, I wish I could draw,” Stiles starts babbling to a shyly pleased Isaac (and what the _hell_ is up with that face? Isaac has been in firefights with _warlords_. _Jesus_ ), as they leave.

Derek runs Scott and Lydia through their objectives while Stiles and Isaac are gone, and as he debriefs them about the various projects they’ve worked on during their time at AE, he feels a small lick of hope curl in his chest. Despite Stiles – despite _everything_ – this just might work.

***

Going in to work the next morning is possibly one of the hardest things Stiles has ever done. It’s impossible to believe that just two days ago, Stiles had taken this exact same route in to work, pushed through these exact same glass doors and flashed his badge at the exact same security guards. Stiles had expected things to look different somehow, but they didn’t. Instead, everything just feels unreal, like he’s in a dream.

At least Scott’s presence next to him is familiar and reassuring. Even as a vague blur out of the corner of his eye, Stiles would know him anywhere. Although, when Stiles looks over at him, Scott is making one of the worst “nothing to see here” faces Stiles had ever seen, turning his _whole head_ to scan the lobby like a puppy tracking a ball.

Cool, so they are going to die instantly.

He tries to remember what Isaac had told them the night before, his voice kind and slow, as they all sat in Scott and Stiles’ living room drinking coffee and going over every detail of their schedules for the next day.

“It’s just gonna be a normal day,” he’d said. “Nothing has changed. You don’t need to conceal anything, or do anything different, because right now you _haven’t_ done anything and you have nothing to hide. All you did was take a sick day.”

“And when you start to forget that, just breathe slowly,” Boyd had added, giving Stiles a shrewd look, like he already knew Stiles would be the one who’d have trouble remaining calm.

Boyd turned out to be right. As he gets into the elevator with Scott, Stiles tries to focus on his breathing, like Boyd had suggested. They’re the same exercises that he’d learned years ago to deal with panic attacks as a kid, and for some strange reason, the realization that _this_ panic is no different from _that_ panic (physiologically speaking) makes him panic _less_. If all he has to do today is endure random jolts of adrenaline and wheezing while pretending everything is fine, well. That basically describes the entirety of middle school, and he _should_ have at least a few more emotional resources now than he did as a thirteen-year-old.

When Stiles gets to his desk, he twirls around on his swivel chair for a while to calm himself down and make everything feel normal again, but all it does is make Cute Danny from Robotics turn slightly green and ask him to stop.

“Hey,” he says now, coming over from where he’d been leaning over Greenberg’s desk chatting. “Heard you were sick yesterday. You OK now?”

“Oh yeah, just like a stomach bug or something. I went out with Lydia and Scott a couple nights ago to this really crappy, divey place that Scott kept saying was “underrated,” and yeah. Turns out it was, in fact, accurately rated.”

Stiles looks up into Danny’s friendly, concerned face, and shrugs to hide the sudden guilty swoop of his stomach. This was going to be his life now, Stiles realizes suddenly. It’s suddenly hitting him that every day that he worked for AE, he was going to have to look at people that he genuinely liked – people like Cute Danny – and lie to them.

And what’s worse, their employer was already lying to them a lot worse than Stiles, and there was nothing Stiles could do about it. How many people had died somewhere because of Danny’s robots?

Danny gives him a funny look, and says kindly, “Well, take it easy today, you still look pretty awful.”

“Thanks,” Stiles says sarcastically, and Danny gives him a little wave before heading out.

When Danny is gone, Stiles stares blankly at his computer and tries to remember what he usually does in the mornings. Hopefully “Buzzfeed quizzes and terror” doesn’t draw any suspicion, because that’s all Stiles feels capable of accomplishing at this time.

But Isaac and Boyd are right. Nothing happens that first day. Stiles keeps expecting it to. He keeps jumping at sudden noises, and when Greenberg looms over his desk to borrow a stapler, Stiles almost punches him in the face.

So in truth, the only thing that happens that first day is that Greenberg decides he’s a public menace, but that’s nothing new.

He and Scott and Lydia sit at their usual table at lunch, looking way more shifty than they should, trying desperately to come up with conversation topics that a few days ago, would have felt natural and easy.

Stiles and Lydia gang up on Scott for a while, because that’s usually a good way to pass some time, but teasing Scott about his hopeless, long-distance crush on Allison Argent, heir apparent to Argent Enterprises, has somehow gotten a lot less funny now that she might be evil.

Scott doesn’t think she’s evil – none of them are actually bringing up the topic, but Stiles can tell what Scott’s trying to say by the stubborn tilt to his jaw, and the way he keeps emphasizing Allison’s _sweet and innocent spirit_ with an insistence that’s starting to veer into creepy.

Somehow, the day ends miraculously without incident, and Lydia drags Scott and Stiles out to a bar and makes them buy her drinks until everything feels normal again, and when they wake up the next day to do it all again, it somehow feels a little less terrifying.

Stiles never thought life as a double agent would become boring, but it does, and fairly quickly too. Nothing really changes at work; they’re in a quiet period after the completion of Lydia’s latest rocket, so they’ve mostly been doing paperwork and other busywork that can’t actually hurt anyone (except kill Stiles with boredom).

Their handlers had said that they were moving themselves into Beacon Hills organically. That this was a long-term mission, and that the Argents were definitely paranoid enough to notice people suddenly appearing in their town and getting friendly with their employees. So they’ve been moving slowly, renting apartments and building ordinary cover identities, staying on the periphery of Stiles’, Scott’s, and Lydia’s lives until they could meet casually.

Derek, they said, would be spending most of his time in the office building they’d seen before, coordinating between all three of them and analyzing the information they received.

Isaac jogs by their apartment every morning now. Soon he’s stopping to talk with them, leaning casually against the brick wall outside their building. And then suddenly, he and Boyd are coming by for breakfast nearly every morning to “check in,” which Stiles is pretty sure means “bully Stiles into making the awesome pancakes with the sliced banana faces.” Isaac also loves Indiana with a pure and deep affection. Like, way more than the dog deserves, in Stiles’ personal opinion. Sometimes he stops by extra, and tries to pretend it’s for an “unscheduled debrief,” and Stiles knows it's just to play with the dog. Sometimes, when the dog has done something stupid, and Stiles yells into the living room that, “Scott, your dumb dog ate my shoe and then barfed it up into my other shoe,” it'll be two voices instead of one yelling back indignantly, “He's not dumb, he a _doctor_!”

Stiles has also stopped being surprised when he comes back from the store or whatever to find Erica and Lydia on his couch watching terrible reality TV and gleefully judging the life choices of strangers.

From there, it’s basically a natural leap to Spy Team Movie Nights, right? They definitely always _start_ by asking if there’s any espionage to discuss, before they switch to whatever horrible movie Scott insists everyone will love.

Is it anyone’s fault that there isn’t actually much espionage to discuss right now?

No. No it is not.

The only person who doesn’t show up uninvited whenever they’re bored – or show up at all, in fact – is Derek. He clearly thinks that the three AE assets, and Stiles in particular, are incompetent idiots to be borne on sufferance, and who are better left to his subordinates to handle.

 _So why did you choose_ us _for your stupid, important, top-secret mission_ , Stiles wants to shout, but of course he doesn’t. Because he hasn’t seen Derek in weeks. Not that this _bothers_ him, or anything, it just happens to cut down on any opportunity to yell at the man for being an antisocial, arrogant _jerk_.

At work, Stiles spends a lot of his time covertly studying his own security code, with a lack of success that _seemed_ funny when he was screwing with Derek, but seems a lot less funny now.

Several weeks into Stiles’ new life as an International Man of Boring Mysteries, he’s making a frustrated grocery run for brain-stimulating Pop Tarts when he bumps into Boyd. Almost literally, except that Boyd apparently has reflexes like a cat.

“Watch out, will you?” Boyd grumbles, putting a steadying arm against Stiles’ shoulder and slipping something into his hoodie pocket at the same time.

“Sorry dude,” Stiles says cheerfully, and he waits until he’s back in his car before looking in his pocket.

It’s a handwritten note that says, _Meet me on Lawrence Street, outside the Preserve._

“Well that’s not creepy,” Stiles says to himself, and promptly calls Boyd.

The minute Boyd picks up, Stiles says, “If you wanted to arrange a secret assignation, all you had to do was ask, buddy.” There’s a sound that Stiles is pretty sure is a muffled laugh on the other end of the line.

“That was my gift to you,” Boyd says, voice deadpan. “Now that you’ve got it out of your system, you can stop dropping things in trash cans and putting weird-colored drapery in your window. It looks really fucking suspicious.”

 _“_ Being a spy is so _boring,”_ Stiles groans.

“Anyway,” Boyd continues. “It wasn’t me. It was Derek.”

“ _Derek_ is arranging a secret assignation _?_ ” Stiles chokes, and wheezes for several breaths before he’s finally able to come up with, “That’s… unexpected.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Boyd says, and now Stiles is certain he’s laughing. “We got a tentative ID on the guy you saw at AE, but we need you to confirm it. I mean, I personally thought we could just give you a photo – the man has Facebook and everything – but _Derek_ insisted that photos lie, or something equally paranoid and nonsensical. So now you get to meet Derek at the address I gave you, so that the two of you can stake out this guy’s house, and hopefully get a good look at him as he comes home from work.”

“Oh. _Oh-ho!_ A _stakeout_ , you say?”

“Don’t get too excited,” Boyd says, but he sounds resigned in the face of Stiles’ relentless glee. “Stakeouts are really boring. And...you know... _Derek_. So it’s mostly gonna be glowering and silence.”

“That’s probably true,” Stiles concedes. “Except that now’s my chance to get him to warm up to me, you know? Like, crack his grouchy exterior, and get to the soft, gooey, interior that we all know is hiding just below the surface!”

“Please stop talking about my boss’ gooey interior,” Boyd interrupts, sounding pained.

“Oh...right,” Stiles says, and he’s glad that Boyd can’t see the sudden blush that heats up his cheeks.

“And also, I’ve worked with the guy for years. Trust me, it’s grouchiness all the way down.”

“We’ll see. Several hours in a confined space with Stiles Stilinski has broken better men.”

“God help him,” Boyd intones, and Stiles hangs up on him in protest.

***

Derek has been parked outside the Beacon Hills Preserve for thirty minutes before a battered blue Jeep wheezes and rattles up next to his car.

“I love stakeouts!” is Stiles’ greeting, as he bangs open the door and hops into the passenger seat, clutching a full backpack to his chest. Derek sighs and resists the urge to run a weary hand over his eyes. Maybe if Derek just sits very quietly and tries not to move, Stiles will give up or forget he’s there? Like a wild animal or something.

“I even brought my traditional stakeout food, so…you’re welcome!”

“You have traditional stakeout food?” Derek blurts out before he remembers he’s not supposed to be engaging. _Dammit!_

“Dad’s the sheriff, remember?” Stiles says as he rifles through his bag.

“Your dad let you come on stakeouts?” Derek takes in the perpetual motion machine that is currently sitting beside him. Derek has never met Stiles’ dad, but he thinks that the man should probably be canonized or something.

“Uhh, _let_ me come...was unaware of my presence…minor details. Here.” Stiles pulls something out of his bag and shoves it in Derek’s face. It smells delicious. “Curly fries. Dinner of champions.”

“Your ‘stakeout meal’ is curly fries? And you kept them in your backpack?” Derek says flatly, and doesn’t take the container.

“Hey, don’t be a jerk, or you’re not getting the Oreo milkshake I brought you, and everyone knows that’s the best flavor.”

Derek eyes the backpack, and deeply fears to know what else is in there. On the other hand, the fries _do_ smell really good.

***

Stiles watches Derek begrudgingly reach out his hand for the food, and suppresses the urge to do a victory first-pump. _Yes! Phase One complete! Achievement unlocked!_

They drive to a nondescript house on the outskirts of Beacon Hills, which according to Derek, belongs to an AE employee named Donald Harrington.

“I’m almost certain his name was Clancy,” Stiles offers, his mouth full of curly fries. “Or maybe something like Percival? Definitely not Donald, though.”

“We’ll find out soon, won’t we,” Derek answers impassively, and then stays very deliberately silent. Stiles fiddles with his milkshake straw, and then digs around in the bottom of his backpack - exclaiming with equal pleasure at old college syllabi and bits of badly soldered wire - and then fidgets, and then settles for staring at Derek, who has narrowly edged out “the coins in the coin holder” as the most interesting and dynamic thing in the car.

At first, Stiles is mainly stuck on the fact that he is _alone_ , in a _car_ , in the _dark_ , with probably the hottest person he’s ever seen outside of porn, and so most of the first half-hour is spent drooling semi-subtly at Derek’s face and trying to pass off his glazed, lustful stare as vague boredom. Derek doesn’t seem to notice.

But even dark hair and shadows and cheekbones can’t hold Stiles’ attention forever, and soon he’s noticing subtler things about Derek, for lack of anything better to notice. Derek eats his curly fries with small, controlled bites, like he takes the notion of curly fries extremely seriously. Stiles assumes that if he’d felt compelled to look, he’d find that each of those bites were the exact same size. All of Derek’s movements, when he makes them, are just as thoughtful and precise. Stiles wonders what it must be like, devoting so much of your focus to _every little thing_. You would barely have any attention left for the fun stuff.

Derek holds himself with perfect posture, and watches Donald Harrington’s house like it’s the only thing in the world. Stiles wonders, briefly, what it would be like, to have that kind of intensity turned on him, and he gets a funny swoop in his stomach that’s part desire and part panic, because that’s the kind of thought that comes with _feelings_ , and feelings never end well for him.

***

Derek is surreptitiously watching Stiles out of the corner of his eye, and he’s pretty sure Stiles hasn’t noticed. He had been looking in Derek’s general direction, but now he’s staring out the window, taking sips from his milkshake and then absent-mindedly chewing on the straw.

It’s that motion that draws Derek’s eyes at first, but then he’s not sure why he keeps getting pulled back to it, to the misshapen straw and Stiles’ tongue darting out to chase it. He also doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so itchy in his own skin. He must fidget or something, because Stiles’ eyes are back on him in an instant. Derek hadn’t noticed before, amidst all the babbling and the chaos and the nonsense, how sharp and quick Stiles’ eyes are. It makes him uncomfortable, somehow.

It’s Stiles who breaks the silence, but Derek is actually grateful to him for it.

“So why are you here, anyway? Not that I’m complaining about your scintillating presence, but don’t you have a ton of badass spy stuff to do that’s more exciting than sitting in a car for hours, since this dude is apparently doing _a million_ errands on his way home?”

“You’d be surprised how much ‘badass spy stuff’ is really just about waiting,” Derek answers, neatly sidestepping the real question. Something in the tilt of Stiles’ head suggests that he’s perfectly aware of Derek’s deflection.

“Actually, I kinda do. Cop’s kid, remember? So why aren’t you foisting this off on Boyd or someone?” Stiles tries again.

And he’s right. Derek probably _should_ have delegated this to Boyd, but it’s never that easy. Laura would say it’s because he’s a control freak. Laura _has_ said that, in fact, multiple times. In multiple languages.

“This is an important mission,” is what Derek says, tightly, when he realizes that he can’t avoid answering indefinitely. Stiles just raises his eyebrows at the dark, silent -- and totally unimportant-looking -- house in front of them.

“The Agency has been trying to stop the Argents for a long time. Since before I joined,” Derek offers.

“Why did you? Join? Was there like a recruitment fair or something? Did a guy in a trench coat pull you into an alley? Did you get a cryptic email...” Stiles looks momentarily diverted by a multitude of these scenarios, lost in his head, his eyes bright.

“It was, um, a family business, I guess,” Derek says awkwardly, and Stiles’ focus slips instantly back to his face.

“Huh,” is all he says.

Derek casts around desperately for _literally any other_ topic of conversation, and then decides that turnabout is fair play.

“So your dad’s a cop. Do your parents live in Beacon Hills too?”

“My mom’s dead, actually,” Stiles says, and Derek recognizes the forced casualness of his tone.

Derek remembers being sixteen and helpless in the face of everyone else’s obligatory pity. He remembers learning how to train the emotion out of his voice, in the hopes that it would hurt less that way. Derek wonders if Stiles, too, avoids mentioning his mother, to prevent people from asking where she is now. Derek wonders if Stiles, too, thinks that eliding someone in conversation, for the sake of politeness, comes uncomfortably close to eliding their whole existence.

“My family...some of them died too,” Derek offers, and Stiles shoots his head up to give Derek an uncomfortably piercing stare.

“In...um...a fire,” Derek says, and stares down at his milkshake.

“Yeah?” Stiles answers, like he already knows everything Derek didn’t say.

And then Derek can see the gears in his head turning, slotting pieces together that he really should _not_ be able to slot, given the paucity of information that Derek has revealed. But he knows perfectly well that even a small bit of information can be too much. Derek really needs to be more careful.

Just as Stiles seems to be gearing up to push some serious boundaries, his attention gets caught by something else, and he’s veering off in a new direction.

“So you don’t ever...like...listen to the radio on these things? Anything?”

“The point is to be alert,” Derek reminds him, rolling his eyes. “And I don’t really listen to music.”

“Oh c’mon, I bet if I saw your phone, it would be _filled_ with ‘80s power ballads. I bet you do air guitar to Nickelback when you’re alone in the car. I bet you sing “Behind Blue Eyes” to yourself every morning, as you stare soulfully at yourself in the bathroom mirror.”

“No, when I sing to my mirror, it’s from behind hazel eyes,” Derek shoots back before he can stop himself, and Stiles goes perfectly still.

“Nothing... _ever..._ for the rest of my life, will be as wonderful as the image of you singing Kelly Clarkson in the shower,” Stiles breathes reverently. Derek can feel his eyes widening, and he can see the exact moment that Stiles gets it, his face blooming red, his mouth making funny little stuttering noises. Which doesn’t explain why Derek feels suddenly awkward and overly warm himself. He twists in his seat to look out at the house, thankfully still totally quiet. By the time he turns back, Stiles has sufficiently recovered from the embarrassing moment.

“...just destroys all your mystique, dude.”

Derek shrugs comfortably. “I have layers,” he says, and slurps loudly on his milkshake just for effect.

***

There’s nothing like enforced proximity, Stiles thinks as he watches Derek drink his milkshake, to rub your face in things you’d really rather not acknowledge. Like how he has a bit of a crush on a taciturn, somewhat terrifying CIA agent who also hates him. Apparently, that’s a thing he’s doing now.

Trust Derek Hale to be, not only _painfully_ hot, but also funny – in a sidelong, reluctant way, like he doesn’t want anyone to know. And good at his job. Like, _yeah_ , he can be kind of intense about it, but it’s not as though Stiles has any room to judge. And anyway, it is a truth universally acknowledged (by Scott) that people who are weirdly, obsessively good at things is basically Stiles’ whole type. Bonus points if they can also kill you. It’s not Stiles’ fault he spent his formative years imprinting on Lydia.

Unfortunately for Stiles, unlike the TA who’d rendered him utterly incoherent for an entire semester of lab meetings (he’d nearly failed his Machine Learning class. It had _not_ been funny, _Scott_ , it had been humiliating), or the poet he’d dated for eight months before she broke his heart by moving to New York and getting _famous_ , or the musician he’d dated after the poet, who’d cheated on him pretty flagrantly but who played bass like it was sex, and vice versa… Stiles inner monologue stutters to a halt at that, and has to be restarted from its last save point.

Right.

 _Unfortunately_ for Stiles, _unlike_ the talented and driven people he usually falls for, Derek Hale seems…sadder. Desperate, somehow. Like he’s talented and driven, not because he enjoys it, but because it’s the only thing still holding him together.

And this is unfortunate for Stiles, because the only thing he finds more irresistible than hot geniuses is a mystery.

Fuck Dark Pasts. No, seriously, fuck the fact that it’s always the guys with perfect cheekbones that have Dark Pasts. Like, don’t they know it’s a cliché?

But Derek is looking casually out the window, nursing his milkshake and possibly even smiling a little, and what the fuck is _that?_ That _totally_ just makes things worse.

 _Fuck_ beautiful men with Dark Pasts who smile when Stiles teases them. Fuck...just...

Fuck.

Stiles is so grateful when his phone buzzes that he flips it out of his pocket and it tumbles down between the seat and the door. By the time he emerges, his face is red (again -- apparently its perpetual state around Derek) and Derek is giving him an inquiring look.

“Ugh, it’s just Scott. He was out drinking with Lydia, and there’s this girl…” Stiles explains distractedly while typing out a response. “Seriously, if I have to hear one more text-poem about Allison Argent’s heavenly kneecaps or whatever…”

“Allison Argent?” Derek’s voice sounds a little strange, and Stiles laughs.

“Yeah, I know. I love Scott like a brother, but _one_ of them is the heir to a multimillion dollar Evil Empire, and _one_ of them puts PB&J sandwiches in his lab coat pockets and forgets about them for days, and I’ll give you a hint--” Stiles stops abruptly when he looks up from his phone and sees Derek’s face.

“We’re leaving,” Derek says through gritted teeth, and Stiles wilts.

“But what about the--” his gesture encompasses the whole stakeout situation, but primarily the fries and milkshake. Priorities. “--you know, important spywork stuff?”

“Just got a lot less important,” Derek says sharply, pulling away with a squeal of tires that’s not even trying to be subtle.

***

“Just because you’ve invaded our _professional_ lives doesn’t mean you get a say in things that are _personal_ ,” Scott is shouting at Derek, some interminable time later.

They’re in their apartment, Scott is still a little loose and flushed with alcohol, and Derek has Scott up against a wall. So the conversation is going great.

“ _Nothing_ about the Argents is _personal_ ,” Derek hisses in Scott’s face, and it’s the lack of volume, the way that Derek is carefully _not_ losing control, that makes it really scary.

“Okay, this is clearly a fraught issue, but maybe we can just...stop manhandling my best friend, and like, discuss it over some coffee?” Stiles hovers by Derek’s side, antsy and unsure, and when Derek whirls on him, Stiles genuinely thinks he’s about to get punched.

But instead, Derek lets go of Scott and stalks furiously to the other side of the room. He’s facing the wall, his shoulders shifting like he’s trying to take deep, calming breaths but not quite managing it.

“Allison doesn’t know anything. She’s not like the rest of her family,” Scott insists, rubbing his at shoulder and crowding into Stiles like there’s any safety in numbers when Derek has _that_ look on his face.

“Oh really?” When Derek wheels around to face them again, he’s laughing. There’s something hollow in the sound that makes Stiles tense up even further. “And how do you know that?”

“I just _know_ ,” Scott insists. “I know _her_.”

“You don’t know _anything_ about the Argents,” Derek shoots back. “They’re _killers_ , Scott, how can you not understand --”

Something clunks into place, then, something that takes the distressed hunch of Derek’s shoulders and the pinched look of his mouth and a thousand other things, and fits them together like puzzle pieces.

“The Argents are the ones, right?” Stiles blurts out, and Derek goes perfectly still. Scott makes a confused noise, but Stiles can only focus on Derek’s reaction. He looks scared. It scares Stiles too a little, to think that he can already read so much about someone he’s barely met. But he knows he’s right about this.

“They’re the ones who killed your family. ‘You’re in the family business’ – that’s what you said earlier.”

Derek’s eyes flicker around the room, like he’s searching for some way out of this conversation. When they finally settle on Stiles, he says “yes,” face shuttered, voice almost too low to hear.

“So this mission is _personal_ for you, is what you’re saying.” Scott crosses his arms and stares evenly at Derek.

 _Uh oh_ , Stiles thinks. He knows that look.

Most of the time – twenty-nine days out of thirty, you might say – Scott is remarkably easily led. Stiles should know, since he’s had so many years of practice doing just that. Sure, Scott will _complain_ when Stiles insists that their university library is haunted and forces Scott to spend all night in the stacks, but when they’re inevitably chased by a security guard, it’ll be Scott who gets them out of the building because “of course I memorized all the exits, Stiles, what if there’d _actually_ been a ghost! Were you just gonna _trap_ us with it in there?”

But every so often – and Stiles has never been able to predict when exactly – Scott will plant his feet and become utterly immovable. And its then that you realize that he’s been _letting_ you manipulate him all along; that when Scott _really_ doesn’t want to do something, he’ll tilt his chin down and give you a level stare, and there’s nothing that _anyone_ will be able to do to change his mind.

Unfortunately for Derek Hale, he has not yet received this memo.

“I’m saying that you can’t trust Allison Argent!” Derek growls, looking like he very much wants to shove Scott into another wall.

“Maybe not,” Scott says, utterly calm in the face of Derek’s increasing agitation. “But I’m also not lying to her for you. Allison asked me on a date, and I’m gonna go. And _you_ can’t actually stop me.”

“Wanna bet,” Derek bites out, pressing back into Scott’s space.

“Why not?” Scott shrugs. “Say, twenty bucks?”

Derek blinks, clearly thrown by Scott’s casual disregard for his threats. Stiles tries hard not to laugh – or at least not to laugh _audibly_ – and escalate this already absurd situation.

Stiles isn’t sure there is any great way to _de-escalate_ it, but Indiana Jones is cowering in one of their bedrooms, and Stiles doesn’t want to lose their security deposit if someone actually throws a punch, so clearly someone has to do _something_. “Look, Derek…Scott and Allison have been doing this will-they-won’t-they flirting thing for so long, they’re like the Jim and Pam of arms dealers. Frankly, Scott turning down a date with Allison would be _way more_ fucking suspicious than anything else he could do.”

Derek has turned to glare at him now, something almost wounded in his expression. Which is probably stupid, wishful thinking on Stiles part – it’s not as though Derek needs _Stiles_ to defend his agent-ly honor. He’s perfectly capable of holding his own in an argument with _Scott_.

“So we bug the date—“ Derek appeals directly to Stiles, maybe because he’s now deemed Stiles to be the more reasonable of the two of them.

And Scott promptly insists, “No way,” so…fair.

“What if we keep working the Harrington angle, since we know for _sure_ he’s involved. Maybe we’ll find some evidence that _proves_ Allison is involved—“ Scott makes a protesting noise at that, and Stiles amends, “—or maybe we won’t! But either way, does it really change anything to just…wait and see?”

“’We’?” Derek has this look on his face like someone just told him to eat his vegetables or he won’t get any dessert. Which is _way_ better than ‘murderous,’ so…win!

“The bond of the Stakeout Milkshakes cannot be broken, dude. We’re in this together, now.”

Derek shifts, crosses his arms (and Stiles mind blares something that would be “forearms!” if it was at all capable of words), and raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize Oreos represented a binding contract.”

“Yeah, they keep all the terms and conditions hidden in the cream filling, that’s why you gotta be sure to twist ‘em apart before you eat them.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Derek gives Stiles a dark look, like he’s just admitted to going through strangers’ mail or correcting people on Twitter. “Then you’re just eating a chocolate cookie. The three parts together is the whole point.”

Stiles throws up his hands so violently he nearly knocks over one of their lamps. “Oh my _God_ , you could _not_ be more wrong!”

“Do you also take the bread off your sandwich and eat it separately? Then why would you take apart a _sandwich cookie_ —“

“Well sorry I don’t feel beholden to the rules of _Nabisco_ —“

“It’s not about _rules_ , it’s about the _ratio_ —“

“Are you—do you still, like…need me for this? Like, can I go to bed, or…”

Derek stiffens. And it’s not as though he’d been doing anything so radical as _smiling_ , before, but his eyes had been bright with something close to amusement, and his gestures had loosened up like he was no longer meticulously planning every movement before he made it.

Now, Stiles can practically _see_ his uninhibited reactions being reeled back behind his walls like they’re on a retractable string. “I should go,” Derek bites out. Stiles opens his mouth to say… _something_. He doesn’t want Derek to go, but it’s not as though Derek has any reason to stay, now that they’ve resolved the Allison thing. But Derek is already disappearing through their door like mopey Batman.

The instant the door clicks shut, Stiles wheels on Scott. “ _Dude_.”

“I’m sorry! But it’s practically midnight, and Indiana still has to go out, and did you _really_ want me standing there and watching you two flirt?”

“We weren’t _flirting_ , we were _discussing mission parameters_!”

“ _Nerdy_ flirting,” Scott insists.

“Oh, like you’re so much better. What did you say to get Allison to go out with you: ‘Want to come up and see my molecules?’”

“No!” Scott coughs – confirming that he absolutely had said that. “And anyway, that would still be _way_ cooler than ‘want to come up and lick my cream filling?’”

Stiles flushes bright red. “ _Gross_ ,” he sputters. “And that’s not what we—that’s not what I was—Derek doesn’t—“

Scott rolls his eyes. “I dunno, dude, seemed to me like he was _totally_ down for twisting your Oreos.”

“You are literally the worst friend in the universe, and just for that, _you_ get to drag Indiana out from under your bed and take him for his walk.”

“I wonder if Allison likes Oreos…”

“Well now I have to go hide under _my_ bed. Thanks for ruining Oreos forever, you monster.”

***

It’s several days after what Derek has privately decided was some sort of milkshake-induced psychosis (he wouldn’t put it past Stiles to have drugged him in some annoyingly untraceable way) that Boyd comes to him with a lead on Harrington.

Apparently, Stiles had taken it upon himself to dig a little deeper than he’d been authorized to do – typical – and had somehow figured out that Harrington was logging on to another server from his AE office computer, and that it was completely inaccessible from the main AE network.

Derek knew this should all worry him _immensely_. Especially since Boyd had waved away the details of _how_ Stiles had found this information with “I’ll spare you the whole boring, technical monologue that _I_ had to suffer through.” Considering that Boyd had once spent an entire flight from DC to London waxing rhapsodic about the miracle of the Undersea Cable System while Derek steadily downed shots of whiskey and yearned for death, it was not one of Boyd’s more convincing lies. Honestly, they were _spies_ , they were supposed to be _good_ at this. But Boyd clearly thinks that Derek will disapprove of whatever it was Stiles had done to discover this hidden server. Which means that Stiles had probably done something highly foolish and risky and likely to blow up in all their faces. Which means that Derek should _absolutely_ disapprove of what Stiles had done.

And what’s worse is that Derek isn’t sure _why_ Stiles had done it. Was it all a ploy to distract Derek from his best friend’s frankly _stupid_ romantic decisions? As far as he knew (not that Isaac was willing to tell him much, and _when_ did all his agents become so subordinate and also so _bad at concealing it_ ), Scott hadn’t actually had his first date with Allison Argent yet, and it’s possible Scott and Stiles were still worried that Derek would forbid it. Frankly, he’s not totally sure why he _hasn’t_.

Or maybe Stiles had taken his joke about “the bond of stakeout milkshakes” seriously – it does seem like the kind of thing Stiles _would_ take seriously – and this is what it looks like when Stiles Stilinski decides to be a team player. In which case, God help them all.

Or maybe Stiles had just been curious, or impatient, and Derek is being totally self-absorbed by assuming it had anything to do with him at all.

The point is, Derek doesn’t _know_ , and the fact that one of his assets is going rogue for unknown reasons should _concern_ him.

But oddly, Derek can’t bring himself to feel worry, or disapproval, or concern. Instead, the only emotion he seems capable of feeling is anticipation.

They’re getting closer. He can see the chain of events so clearly in his mind, the one that starts in this moment and leads to the Argents’ destruction. It looks bright and strong, for the first time in years. In the long run, does it really matter how that chain got forged? So much had already been sacrificed to this mission. Just a little more, and then it would be done. And it wouldn’t even take a sacrifice, not really. Just a risk. The kind of risk that Stiles had just proven himself willing to make.

***

“We have surveillance on Harrington’s house, Derek,” Boyd says practically. He and Derek had shown up at Stiles and Scott’s house the afternoon after Stiles had maybe, possibly, accidentally done some _very_ routine maintenance on the part of AE’s network that logs computer activity, and figured out that there were whole blocks of time when Donald Harrington was using his desktop but wasn’t on the company server. At which point, it hadn’t been _that_ much of a leap to conclude that someone (meaning Stiles, of course. That wasn’t so much _written_ on the wall as spray-painted in big neon graffiti letters) would need access to Harrington’s physical computer in order to break into the server.

Derek had been in the process of gently wending his way to this shocking revelation, as though Stiles might bolt if Derek came at him too directly with something like “Stiles, we want you to burgle some murderers.” …Okay, yeah, Stiles can see why Derek went with a subtler route. But then Boyd had veered wildly off-script, and it was clear from the hint of frustrating coloring his tone that this was an argument they’d had at least once already. Stiles was almost touched that Boyd was bringing it up again, after Derek had surely told him to drop it, just to make sure that Stiles knew the options. Informed consent, and whatnot.

Boyd continues on with his doomed quest to change Derek’s mind: “We should wait and see who shows up there. Get a sense of who Harrington’s contacts might be; gather more information. It’s low-risk to us, and it’ll put us in a better position if we need to act later.”

“That’s a total waste of time,” Derek snaps. Boyd frowns and leans very deliberately back into the couch in a way that practically screams “I am not reacting!” Stiles, whose gaze is bouncing between the two of them like he’s courtside at Wimbledon, winces. Derek continues: “There’s no reason to believe Harrington is holding covert meetings in his home.”

“Yeah, who’d be stupid enough to do _that_ ,” Stiles interjects with a gesture that encompasses Boyd on the couch with Indiana napping against his feet, as Derek paces around their living room with Mewtwo draped possessively across his shoulders. The cats had apparently claimed Derek as one of their own, which was almost as hilarious as Derek gamely allowing two small, furry creatures to climb his body like mountaineers. It’s not like Stiles can fault their taste – he’d be clinging to Derek Hale’s abs too if he thought he could get away with it.

In any case, Derek apparently does _not_ appreciate Stiles impugning the sacred process of Living Room Spycraft, because he glares Stiles into silence. Or rather, Derek glares Stiles into grumbling “I’m just _saying_ ,” and then, “I could do with a snack, anyone else want a snack? I’ll just…“ Which is the Stiles equivalent of silence.

By the time Stiles comes back with some chips in a bowl, Derek’s scowl has evened out into a much more neutral glower, which Stiles interprets as a sign that Derek has gotten his way, and instead of going with Boyd’s smarter, _safer_ plan, Stiles will _indeed_ be conducting some light breaking and entering tomorrow. They might have waited to make the final decision, one that affected _Stiles’_ life and safety, for the thirty seconds it took Stiles to get the larger snack bowl down from the top shelf, but apparently the life of a spy is just filled with these kinds of fast-paced twists and turns.

“Tostidos. Awesome,” says Boyd, who is looking very intently at those chips rather than at Stiles’ face. So, great, Stiles is _absolutely_ about to die.

Some of this realization must have shown on Stiles face, because Derek growls, “Oh you’ll be fine,” which might be the least reassuring thing Stiles has _ever_ heard, narrowly edging out the longtime champion: “Of course I can drive! I always beat you at Mario Kart, don’t I?” (Scott McCall, Age 13, the first but not the last time they stole a car).

And some of _this_ train of thought must _also_ have shown on Stiles’ face, because Derek grudgingly adds, as though he’s doing Stiles a great personal favor: “You’ll have Boyd in your ear the whole time. And you’ll have a camera feeding everything you see directly back to me. So. I’ll be watching.”

Derek blinks, and his face flushes a little, and suddenly he seems determined to look anywhere but at Stiles.

“Oh my _God_ , you _really_ need to work on your inspirational speeches, dude. Because that wasn’t so much “motivating” as it was “creepy as hell.” You’ll be _watching_? What are you, the fucking _Babadook_?”

“Shut _up_ , Stiles.”

“You know Derek, if it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of—hey!“

With preternatural spy reflexes, Derek grabs the bowl of chips from Stiles’ hands and stuffs an entire handful into own mouth. Boyd, meanwhile, is struggling not to laugh.

“You’ll be _fine_ ,” Derek repeats, through his mouthful of about thirty Tostidos. Stiles has truly never felt safer.

***

Derek glances around his cobbled-together mission command center, doing one last check to make sure everything is in order for the upcoming operation.

The monitor on his right side is currently streaming Stiles’ video feed, which is coming from a tiny camera masquerading as a button on one of Stiles’ myriad shapeless cardigans. The monitor to his left is cycling through footage from the few surveillance cameras that the CIA has managed to train on the outside of Argent Enterprises’ complex, including its various parking lots. And lastly, Derek’s headphones are in working order, and are currently emanating a steady stream of Stiles’ panic-monologue.

Derek’s temporary office is wedged in an out-of-the-way corner of a nondescript office park, in the uninspiringly named town of “West Beacon.” Of course there is an alias on the doorplate of the office space they’d hurriedly rented when they’d gotten Lydia’s tip, but inside is a mess of surveillance equipment, and, in one secure room, enough weaponry to level Argent Enterprises, if that ends up being called for. Erica’s eyebrows might have flown up into her bangs at the sight of the FIM-92 Stinger in the corner – a hand-held surface-to-air missile – but Derek knows how slippery the Argents can be, and he refuses to take the chance that they might escape in a helicopter. Or a small plane. Really, there are _several_ possible uses for it, and if Deaton had thought it was overkill, he wouldn’t have let Derek requisition it. So the very fact that it’s over there next to their mini fridge means it’s fine. Derek has endured worse things for a mission than Erica calling him “Rambo” for a few days, and anyway, she’ll stop teasing quickly enough once Derek agrees to let her shoot it.

For this operation, there shouldn’t be any need for weapons at all, Derek reminds himself sternly. They hadn’t even given Stiles a gun, even though he’d asked, because:

  1. a gun where no gun is supposed to be is _far_ more suspicious than a _person_ who’s where he’s not supposed to be. Especially if that person is as annoying and nosy as Stiles. If he hadn’t _already_ rifled through more than one colleague’s desk just for the hell of it, Derek would turn in his _own_ gun.
  2. Knowing Stiles, he would have had some absurd and improbable accident with it. The gun would have gone off and hit a chandelier – were there chandeliers in the Argent Enterprises lobby? Probably not, and yet Stiles would have unerringly found a chandelier to shoot down anyway, Derek is _sure_ of it.



And _yes_ , Derek _had_ typed up this list, titled it “Reasons Stiles Is Forbidden From Handling a Weapon,” and taped it prominently to Stiles and Scott’s fridge. Neither one of them had seemed particularly cowed by it. Scott had taken one look at the title and said, “oh don’t worry, I don’t think Stiles has _handled a weapon_ besides his own since—“

At which point Stiles had elbowed him _hard_ in the stomach and said loudly, “I _can_ shoot a gun, you know, just in case anyone still cares about making _unbiased_ , _evidence-based_ decisions around here!”

At which point _Derek_ had said, “Not even a little,” and Stiles had gone all splotchy and sullen and prone to muttering direly every time he walked into his kitchen. And Derek had told himself that the swoop of satisfaction he’d felt was _purely_ due to fact that he’d reasserted control over the mission, and _definitely not_ due to the way Stiles’ lower lip pouts when he’s mad.

All of which is to say that Stiles is about to break into Donald Harrington’s office without a gun, and Derek does not feel even the smallest bit guilty about it.

Derek completes his final equipment check and settles down into his desk chair to wait for Stiles and Boyd to be ready. As Stiles’ official handler, Boyd is the one running things tonight. He’s currently set up in the back of a nondescript van, far enough away from AE to avoid suspicion but close enough to get there quickly if he’s needed. Technically, Derek doesn’t have to do anything tonight except listen from a distance.

“Okay, Stiles,” Boyd’s steady, calming voice comes over the comm, and Derek can feel his own breath evening out and his shoulders relaxing instinctively in response. Boyd is a great agent – quick-thinking and utterly unflappable in a crisis – and Derek knows he’d been lucky to scoop him up for the Argent op, when Boyd is always in such high demand at Langley. But the two of them always get along well; have done ever since Derek saved Boyd’s life in Manila and Boyd had returned the favor in Berlin.

Derek sighs, and carefully starts to clear his mind of these tangled, wispy strands of irrelevant thought. Now is no time for reminiscences, or distraction. Derek closes his eyes, takes a breath, and forces himself to focus on the sound of Boyd’s voice.

“The building will mostly be empty at this time of night, so you shouldn’t run into anyone, but just remember: you forgot your phone in your office. Not a big deal; you have every right to be here.”

“Totally.” Stiles sounds oddly high-pitched. His button camera wavers, and Derek can picture the way Stiles must be bouncing his knee to make the picture vibrate like that. His mental image is so clear, he could practically be looking through the window of Stiles’ eyesore of a battered blue Jeep himself, but of course their parking lot surveillance footage isn’t nearly good enough to manage that.

“Can’t go a day without my phone, everyone knows that,” Stiles continues. “Since I have so many friends, and everything.” His voice begins to pick up speed, and Derek suppresses a sigh. “I mean, I guess I could be, like, an online gambler? A Stardew Valley addict? Ooh, or maybe I’m into, like, some _really_ weird porn that I don’t want Scott to know about—“

Derek huffs and hits a switch on his comm system so that he can bark “Stiles!” directly into the man’s ear. And Derek _would_ be concerned that he’s managed to stick to his policy of noninterference for a grand total of thirty seconds, but honestly, he dares any other senior agent to do better under these conditions.

“I’m just trying to get into character!” Stiles yelps. His hands appear in front of the camera and then disappear just as abruptly as he waves them in some pattern only known to himself.

“Your character is _you_ ,” Boyd reminds him, deftly regaining control of the situation. Derek _should_ feel guilty, except…well, frankly, he just doesn’t.

“Just do what feels natural,” Boyd continues soothingly. “Use the elevators to go up to your office on the eighth floor, and then take the stairs up to the fourteenth. There are no cameras in the stairwells, so you should be fine. Once you get to the fourteenth floor, turn on the short-range WiFi disruptor we gave you and leave it under the surveillance camera in the hallway. We’ll lose contact with you for a few seconds, but its range is only a few feet, and we’ll pick you up again once you step away from it. Then you just have to make your way to Harrington’s office, pick his lock with the device you have with you, and then break into the private server.” Of course Stiles already knows all this – they’d run through the plan endlessly – but Derek knows it can comfort a jittery asset to hear it again.

“Oh, is that all,” Stiles says faintly. The button camera lists to one side before abruptly jerking back to a straight-ahead angle. This seems to act as some sort of internal signal for Stiles, because the next thing the camera does is wheel around as Stiles gets out of the car.

Surprisingly enough, Stiles’ initial infiltration of Argent Enterprises goes mostly fine. The worst thing that happens is that Stiles invents a song to sing under his breath as he climbs the six flights of stairs between the eighth and the fourteenth floors, which goes something like:

 _I hate stairs.  
I’m gonna die here  
On these stairs.  
I really hate this,  
Look more stairs.  
Wish I had a gun,  
I would shoot these stairs_.

The camera swoops to and fro as Stiles clutches at the stairwell bannister and hauls himself melodramatically up to the fourteenth floor. Honestly, Derek considers it a good sign that Stiles has stopped panicking for long enough to start complaining instead, although Stiles would certainly insist that he’s perfectly capable of doing both at once.

Derek assumes that he or Boyd (no - just Boyd. This is _Boyd’s_ job, Derek’s only meant to observe) will be forced to step in and remind Stiles to take this seriously, but the minute Stiles reaches the stairwell door that leads out to Harrington’s hallway, he goes startlingly quiet and the motion of his button cam becomes smooth and economical. It’s like between floors thirteen and fourteen, Stiles has transformed into an entirely different, actually _competent_ person.

Derek does not trust Stiles’ abrupt silence one bit; it feels like some natural order of things has just been upended.

“Switching on the WiFi disruptor now,” Stiles murmurs. As expected, his camera and microphone both go staticky. This is one of the more precarious moments of the whole operation. If AE’s security notices the “broken” security camera and decides to investigate, Stiles will be trapped up there.

Seconds pass. The disruptor’s range isn’t wide. It should only take a few steps for Stiles to move out of its range, and for his signal to come back online.

“What is he _doing_ ,” Derek bites out, glaring at his screen as though he could will away the image of static.

“Just wait,” Boyd murmurs.

It’s been at least thirty seconds now.

“Boyd…”

Derek realizes he’s tapping his fingers relentlessly on his desk and forces himself to stop. Usually, Derek has no problem falling into a kind of watchful stillness during an operation, but this one feels different somehow. He’s so _far away_ here, trapped in this distant office like some sort of _analyst_. Derek’s one of the best field agents the Agency has, goddamn it. He should have insisted on joining Boyd in the van.

He doesn’t even have a cordless headset here. He’s not even able to _pace_ –

Stiles’ screen blinks back to life at the same time as his voice flows over the comms, breathless and already mid-word.

“—ry, sorry, sorry,” he’s whispering. “I didn’t want to just leave the disruptor in the middle of the hallway, but there wasn’t a great place to stash it. So, y’know, make a note for the CIA’s version of Q – do you have a Q? Or is that, like, specifically an MI6 thing? Anyway, for _whoever_ designs this stuff: maybe make your spy devices look less, I dunno, _obviously suspicious_? It had, like, _so_ many blinking lights and wires. You’re telling me you couldn’t put it into a cute little Roomba body or something? Oh my god, wait, _Stealth Roomba_ , that’s actually a great—”

Derek lets out a breath, and gives himself one moment to imagine wrapping his twitching fingers around Stiles’ frustrating, obnoxious, overly flippant, unfairly _gorgeous_ neck before he ruthlessly shuts down the impulse. The fact that Derek is feeling _anything_ towards his asset is already thoroughly unprofessional. He can only assume it’s this mission – the chance to finally take down the Argents for good – that has him so off his game. Even so, Derek needs it to _stop_.

If Boyd is feeling any of the turmoil that Derek is, he certainly doesn’t show it. He’s even chuckling a little as he tells Stiles dryly that he’ll put it in the suggestion box.

“Wait, does the CIA _really_ have a box—“

“No, Stiles. Now focus, please. Harrington’s office should be number 1431. Do you see it?”

“Yeah, it’s here on the right.”

Stiles’ camera swings around to reveal a nondescript office door with Donald Harrington’s name on the doorplate.

“Nobody here,” Stiles murmurs under his breath. “Turning on the lockpick now.” The camera tilts as Stiles leans casually against the door, hiding the lockpick device from view. “In retrospect, there might be a few flaws in our keycard lock system, which, if we weren’t all _evil_ , I might be tempted to point out, but I feel like ‘my boss is a murderer’ is like, the best possible excuse for half-assing your job…Oh hey, it worked!”

There’s a click and the door swings open.

“This thing is actually pretty cool! I guess there’s no way I could borrow…“

“Not in a million years,” Boyd says serenely. “Okay, now what you need to do is—”

But Stiles interrupts him with a laugh. “No way, dude. I followed your lead for all the sneaky spy parts, because they were, frankly, scary as shit. Between all the cardio and the burgling, I’m honestly surprised I didn’t pass out from bodily stress, like, right there in the hallway. But now that I’ve made it to the computer stuff? I _finally_ get to do something I’m actually _good_ at, so sit back, grab a Gatorade – or, I dunno, a fancy espresso, or whatever it is that spies drink, I don’t really understand your life – and let me do my thing.”

Derek scowls and jabs at the button that will switch him to a private channel with Boyd. They can still hear Stiles, but he can’t hear them.

“You need to make him take this more seriously, he’s—“

“Derek,” Boyd interrupts, and even though Derek can’t see him, he can practically _feel_ Boyd rolling his eyes. “Chill. Like the man said: grab a Gatorade and let him work.”

“I don’t _like_ Gatorade,” Derek snaps, and then is instantly horrified with himself. Judgmental silence exudes from his headphones.

“A fancy espresso, then,” Boyd finally says, after several excruciating seconds.

“Oh fuck you.”

Boyd laughs before switching them both back to the main channel, where Stiles has been quietly mumbling to himself this whole time.

“We were right, and I should be able to get into the secret server from here. Just give me a minute to bypass this frankly pitiful security. They clearly assumed that since it was _physically_ hard to access, they didn’t have to do much else… Should have asked me to design it, although in retrospect…”

It’s almost impossible for Derek to fathom it, but after years of work and endless disappointments – after reconciling himself to enduring the suffocating guilt of failure for the rest of his life – they might actually be getting a real break. Something that could _finally_ do some tangible damage to the Argents. Stiles is cheerfully dismantling the layers of security that stand between them and the Argents’ best-protected, most secret data like it’s a slightly underwhelming video game, and Boyd is quiet over the comms, and _holy hell_ , this stupid plan might actually _work_.

“Shit,” Boyd says quietly.

Or, alternatively, jinxes are real.

“What’s going on?”

“Might be nothing, but a vehicle matching Harrington’s just pulled into the parking lot. Let me confirm…Double shit. Stiles, you need to—“

“Got it! I’m in!”

“ _Stiles_ —“

“Wait,” Derek blurts out. The word carries his usual snap of command. Derek is distantly shocked at that, because internally, all he feels is a kind of buzzing panic. “We don’t know that he’s heading directly to his office. Stiles, how much time do you—“

“Maybe three minutes to transfer the server contents, another minute or two to cover my tracks,” Stiles says. He’s quiet for a moment. “I think I can make it.” Each word lands with a calm confidence that Derek would never have believed Stiles capable of, if he hadn’t just heard it for himself.

“Maybe,” Boyd allows, sounding tense. “But we can’t risk it. I’m calling this—”

“Boyd, I am telling you—“

Boyd’s and Stiles’ voices interweave cacophonously in Derek’s ears as each one gets louder and more insistent. And Boyd is right, _obviously_ he’s right. If Stiles is discovered here and now, it could destroy any chance they have against the Argents, not to mention probably cost Stiles his life in the bargain, and Boyd is doing exactly what any agent in his position would do. It’s the only responsible option. Stiles isn’t even a trained field agent. He’s just a moderately clever person in a dangerous situation, and in just a few seconds, Derek will open his mouth and put all the weight of his own considerable authority behind Boyd’s call, because it _is_ Boyd’s call, and--

“ _Trust me,_ ” Stiles is insisting, voice ringing with conviction.

And when Derek opens his mouth, what he finds himself saying is: “Give him a minute, Boyd. Stiles, keep us updated on your timing.”

There’s a sound like a hand thudding against a table, and Derek’s comm channel switches abruptly to the private one between himself and Boyd.

“Derek, are you _crazy_?” Boyd wastes no time in hissing. “We need to get him out of there, _now_.”

“You’re the one who’s been advocating for patience,” Derek retorts. Now that he’s made a decision, his mind feels clear and sharp again, and for the first time today, he finally feels his body settle into a familiar state of watchful calm.

“Because you’ve been jumpy as all hell, and now you want to put someone who is _basically a civilian_ directly in the line of fire? What the _hell_.”

“I’ll take responsibility if anything goes wrong. You won’t be on the hook for it.”

“You can’t be _serious_ ,” Boyd hisses, and Derek can’t remember the last time he’s heard Boyd lose his temper so spectacularly. Derek has seen Boyd react less dramatically to being _shot_. “I don’t actually care about covering my own ass right now, _you lunatic_.”

“Then I suggest you prepare to back up the asset as necessary, Agent Boyd, because my orders stand.”

“ _Fuck!_ ” Boyd snarls, before obediently switching them back to the main channel. The whole exchange has taken maybe thirty seconds total, in which time Harrington has managed to find a parking spot, unfortunately close to the building’s entrance, and has gotten out of his car.

“Stiles?”

“Data transfer’s at about 40%.”

“Harrington’s through security and at the elevator. I can still see him through the glass of the entrance, but once he gets in, I won’t have eyes on him,” Boyd bites out. “At what point am I allowed to extract the asset, _boss_?”

“68%,” Stiles mutters. “Just give me a few more minutes…”

“Harrington is getting into the elevator now. I don’t think you _have_ a few more minutes, Stiles, you need to—“

“Done!” Stiles interrupts triumphantly. “Now I just need to erase any record of the transfer, and…”

His hands clatter loudly over the keys, but even so, the distant “ding” of elevator doors is unmistakable through his comm. Stiles’ hands stutter, but a moment later he’s banging away again, faster than before.

“Stiles…” Boyd’s voice is low and tense, almost sorrowful. Derek feels pain blooming at his fingertips, and realizes that he’s been digging deep gouges into the arm of his chair. His useless fucking office chair. It has an _adjustable seat_ , for God’s sake, a little lever you can pull to make the hours you spend in one of these things feel more comfortable – less interminable. Stiles Stilinski is about to be caught. He might be tortured – he’ll likely be killed – and Derek is busy sitting in a chair with a padded back and a lever.

He thinks about what he’d just insisted to Boyd: that whatever happens next is his responsibility. They hadn’t been empty words. Derek is intimately familiar with this kind of responsibility – with trusting instincts that turn around and betray you.

Derek already knows exactly how it will feel when Stiles dies.

Boyd’s voice, evenly professional on the surface, but with a snap of urgency that Derek recognizes from other missions-gone-wrong, is enough to pull Derek’s focus away from past and future pain, and back into the present.

“Stiles, I want you to go stand by the door; when Harrington comes in, you’re going to—“

“No, listen,” Stiles says in a low voice. He swings his chair toward the doorway but doesn’t otherwise move. “I have a better idea.”

“Stiles, don’t—“

“Trust me,” Stiles says, and Derek tries to breathe through the tight pressure in his throat, grasping for the certainty he’d felt upon hearing those words before, just a few short minutes ago, but now it’s nowhere to be found.

It’s too late anyway, because at that moment, the door swings open and Stiles’ button camera picks up a clear image of Donald Harrington taking two steps into his office and then stopping with a sharp cry of surprise. Derek keeps his eyes fixed on the monitors, as though his rapt attention will have any effect on the ultimate outcome, and hits the button that will connect him privately to Boyd.

“We might not be able to effect a rescue within the compound, but if Harrington removes him from the building, I want you to be ready—“ Derek instructs rapidly.

“I am,” is all Boyd says, before he switches himself pointedly back to the main channel. Derek curses to himself. His eyes are burning with the urge to blink, but he can’t, he _won’t,_ not until…

Harrington finally seems to recover from his surprise, and it’s with a strident shout that he demands to know what the hell Stiles thinks he’s doing.

Derek can hear the squeak of a chair as Stiles’ camera drifts upward; he must have leaned back.

“Cleaning up your mess,” is what Stiles finally says coolly. Harrington and Derek’s mouths (and probably Boyd’s too if Derek could see it) drop open.

“My _what_?” Harrington’s face is turning redder with confusion and outrage.

“Dark Canyon,” Stiles pronounces with relish.

All the feeling drains from Derek’s body, and all he can think is _not again_. He can accept that his instincts are permanently fucked up, especially when it comes to the Argents, but there’s no way they’re _this bad._ There’s no way _Stiles_ of all people has been playing him…

The words seem to have a similarly dramatic effect on Harrington, who pales and asks, “S-sorry?”

“Oh c’mon, Don. Can I call you Don? Did you _really_ think I wouldn’t figure it out?” The camera tips up even further as Stiles kicks his feet casually up onto Harrington’s desk.

Something about the thud of Stiles’ battered red Converses breaks whatever spell Derek has been under, and he sucks in a deep breath to fight the spiraling numbness that had temporarily overwhelmed his common sense. Derek has no idea what the hell Stiles thinks he’s doing right now, but even _Stiles_ isn’t arrogant enough to announce his turn to the Dark Side to the two CIA agents currently tracking his every move.

“I think you should leave before I call security,” Harrington says shakily.

“Oh please do,” Stiles retorts pleasantly, and Derek hears the influence of Lydia’s longtime friendship in way he circles, with shark-like patience, before going in for the kill: “I’d be happy to tell them _all about_ how easy it is to gain access to something called the Alpha Project from _your_ machine. I wonder what will concern them more: the cyber-security expert who found a vulnerability in their system, who’s offering to fix it? Or, y’know…the vulnerability itself. Which, in case I wasn’t clear enough, is _you_ , Don.”

Apparently Stiles _was_ clear, because Harrington deflates like a sad balloon. “What do you want?”

“I want in,” Stiles announces. There’s a moment of shocked silence, before Derek, Boyd, and Harrington all begin protesting simultaneously. And while usually, Derek wouldn’t feel _great_ about finding himself so staunchly on the side of an arms dealer, in a battle with Stiles he’s willing to take all the allies he can get.

“Stiles, you need to get out of there, _that’s_ the priority,” Boyd is insisting, while Derek has chosen the less eloquent but no less emphatic route of just repeating variations on, “No. No way. Don’t you dare…”

Stiles cheerfully ignores all of them. “Let me explain this again in smaller words for you.” Derek wonders if he’s imagining the pointed tone, like Stiles isn’t just talking to Harrington there. He wonders how mad Deaton would be if they managed to save Stiles’ life only for Derek to murder him in the parking lot. Surely once Deaton hears these tapes, he’ll agree it was in the national interest.

Stiles continues, “I know _ev-er-y_ secret,” drawling the words out in the most deliberately obnoxious way possible. “And if I can learn them, so can anyone else. So you can either bring me in, take advantage of my very considerable skills, and get credit for fixing a problem that even your bosses missed, _or_ I’ll take you down with me. Your choice, Donny. And I mean, I know which one _I’d_ go with, but—“

“Alright!” Donald interrupts, sounding frazzled and not a little bit annoyed, and Derek would almost feel sympathy for the man. Once he’d let Stiles start talking, it had been all over for him. He just hadn’t known it yet. “Alright. I’ll set up a meeting. Fair warning, they might kill you no matter what,” Harrington adds maliciously.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “I can handle myself.” And yeah, that was _definitely_ not directed solely at Harrington.

“Still not getting a gun,” Derek insists into his comm.

“Stiles, _please_ ,” Boyd groans.

“Alright well, uh, good talk, I’ll just…” Stiles’ camera shifts as he stands up from the desk, “…leave you to it. Get a message to my desk when it’s done. Or send me a coded message signed in blood, whatever feels appropriate to the occasion.” His camera bobs as he makes some motion that might be an awkward half-bow before sailing out of the office with a cheery “Bye, Don!”

It’s only when Stiles hits the stairs that he starts to hyperventilate. Derek had assumed that Stiles had been too foolish to feel as much fear as he ought to, and it’s only now that he’s huddled on a twelfth-floor landing and wheezing miserably into his knees, that Derek realizes that Stiles had been _precisely_ as scared as he ought to be, but he’d managed the fear until it was safe to fall apart. It takes some agents years to learn that skill. Derek is grudgingly impressed.

Boyd gently leads Stiles through a breathing exercise, and as Derek raises a shaky hand to his face, he thinks he could do with one as well. God, what had he been _thinking_? What had _Stiles_ been thinking? And worst of all, how the _hell_ is he going to explain any of this to Deaton?

**Author's Note:**

> My goal is to have the next chapter up next week! It's a little less done than this one was, but it's most of the way there.


End file.
